


Futures Trading

by GalahadWilder



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Abuse, Ace Alix Kubdel, Alternate Timelines, Angst, Asexual Character, Chat Blanc - Freeform, Child Abuse, Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting, Gen, Guardian Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Miracle Queen, Post Chat Blanc, Post Miracle Queen, Sexual Harassment, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22096303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalahadWilder/pseuds/GalahadWilder
Summary: Alix Kubdel has been training to be Bunnix since the day she met her future self. She's been anticipating it for months, dreaming about it, drooling about it—But it wasn't supposed to happen yet. Not for years.There's no way she could ever ready for the emotional toll Fluff's power takes.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alix Kubdel & Fluff
Comments: 61
Kudos: 739





	Futures Trading

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Knowing is the price we pay for setting right what had already been written in stone."

_Alix grits her teeth. “Show me again.”_

Alix Kubdel thought she would have more time. Bunnyx, as far as she could tell the one time they met, was at least in her twenties, maybe older; as the “Ace in the Hole,” she knew she’d be getting her Miraculous last. She’s been preparing, shadowing her father at the Louvre, learning as much as she can about history; she can’t exactly study the future, so she takes what she can get.

And then Miracle Queen, and suddenly every other one of Ladybug and Chat Noir’s backups got compromised at once. And suddenly Alix is the only member of the team left whose identity _hasn’t_ been revealed.

Alix isn’t ready for this.

_“Will you be sure?” Fluff says, in her twisting manner that pays no attention to verb tenses. “You were crying next time we watching this.”_

_Alix grits her teeth, trying to ignore the wetness on her cheeks. She hasn’t cried in front of people since they pulled the plug on her mother; when she met Bunnyx and realized her adult self had the power to get the cancer diagnosed early, and **hadn’t** , she’d managed to wait until Ladybug and Chat Noir had left for the day before breaking down. But **this** … this is **obscene**._

The back of the class isn’t Alix’s preferred spot, but right now there’s a lot of things that she’s not prepared to deal with. Kim doesn’t understand why she’s brushing him off, not taking him up on his dares, but… Roi Singe or not, she can’t explain it to him. Because right now it’s not.

Adrien walks through the door, backpack slung over one shoulder, smiling and laughing as he speaks to Nino, and a chill shoots up Alix’s spine. He wouldn’t be smiling if he knew.

_“Do it.”_

_She sees Hawkmoth— **Gabriel goddamn Agreste** —swing his cane at his son, smack him like a baseball across Paris. Even knowing who he is. He puts a butterfly into him, twists his mind, forces Adrien to murder the love of his life._

_Alix wants to scream. “I have to tell them,” she says._

_Fluff shakes her head, looping in the open space of the burrow. “We went over this,” she says. “Will have gone over this? You cannot.”_

_Alix jabs her finger towards the circular time window. “That’s his **father** , Fluff!”_

As Adrien takes his seat near the front, Alix’s eyes zero in on the ring on his left hand. He’s worn it for as long as she’s known him, only taking it off once—for Marinette’s photoshoot. And that was the day that Ladybug and Chat Noir had swapped jobs.

Too many coincidences, but all of them easily explained. It’s not hard to figure out why she missed it.

_Fluff nods. “Yes, it was,” she says. “But Ladybug finding out too early was a disaster. Will be a disaster.” She flits over to another window, pointing at Gabriel Agreste with a book in his hands, turning the pages with a stern look on his face. “Hawkmoth has the grimoire for four years. His alchemy was too strong. If Ladybug knew too early… she goes straight for him. She lost. Loses. Will lose.”_

_Alix growls. “ **When** , then?”_

_Fluff looks at Alix sadly. “She needed to unlock Tikki’s final power.”_

When Ladybug had brought her the watch and asked her to join the team permanently, she’d been ecstatic. She’d had no idea of the cost.

“Good morning, Adrien!” Lila says, a smile plastered on her face, stepping into Adrien’s space.

Now that she’s looking for it, Alix doesn’t miss the way Adrien stiffens, leans away from her. The way his face shifts from genuine joy to fear masked with politeness. The way nobody else in the class except Nino seems to notice his discomfort.

It takes everything Alix has not to growl.

_“No,” Alix breathes, her heartbeat crushing in her ears, staring through the window as Lila is taken away in handcuffs. “She—she can’t have been lying. There was proof! We **saw** the proof!”_

_“Fabricated,” Fluff says. “Every bit of it.”_

_Alix collapses to the ground, hiding her head between her knees. “Of_ **_course_ ** _Marinette knew,” she mumbles to herself. “She’s_ **_Ladybug._ ** _Why else would she be so adamant that Lila was lying?” She feels bile rising in her throat—she wants to vomit. She makes sure to look for a window with Gabriel in it, just in case._

_After a moment, the feeling subsides, and she wipes her mouth. “We have to tell them,” she says. “We have to tell them she’s—”_

_Fluff’s face falls, and Alix knows._

_“Lila wasn’t the one who fabricated the evidence,” Alix says, certainty setting into her heart with the horror of a boulder pressing into her lungs. “Was she.”_

_Fluff closes her eyes. “You’re right,” she says. “Have been right.” She opens them again, and those innocent bunny blues—not so innocent, now, just hiding the horror—are flooding with tears. “Hawkmoth cannot be defeated without Lila beside him, undermining him. She needs power, and we must give it to her.”_

_“I won’t hurt my friends.”_

_“You must.”_

_Alix’s face twists in rage and disgust. “ **Do you understand what you’re asking me?** ” she cries, pressing her hands against one of the time windows, watching Marinette—her **friend** —break down sobbing into her mother’s arms._

_Fluff nods sadly. “I have.”_

Setting up the websites and faking the news articles backing Lila’s claims hadn’t been difficult. At least, not in a technical sense. She’s spent enough time around Max to know how to work that kind of thing. But emotionally? She’d barely managed it. Knowing that the day Lila returned to class was going to be absolute hell for Marinette, for _her friend,_ and it was all Alix’s fault.

If she could have, she would have undone everything about that day. Instead, she’d had to cause it.

“I’ve found the nicest little café just off the Trocadero,” Lila is saying to a clearly uncomfortable Adrien, encroaching on his space in a manner that appears accidental, appears innocent. “I thought you might like it. You free for lunch?”

“N-no, not really,” Adrien says. “Got a, um, photoshoot?”

Lila’s brow furrows. “Really?” she says. “Nathalie didn’t tell me anything about another shoot.”

Adrien’s eyes flick towards Nino. “Ah, there’s, um. Already another female model lined up for this one.”

“Oh.” Lila pouts. “Well, maybe I can come by anyway? For moral support?”

Adrien’s mouth opens slightly, desperate, trying to find a way out, but he doesn’t manage to get a word out before the door bursts open and Marinette bolts into the classroom.

“I’M NOT LATE!” she shrieks, and as she runs to her seat Alix can see the Ladybug in the way she moves—when Lila slides her foot back into Marinette’s path, probably to claim an injury, Marinette doesn’t even look while deftly and subtly avoiding the ankle.

This had been the one thing that Alix couldn’t abide—leaving Marinette to fend for herself. Leaving her alone as the Guardian, with no one to talk to, no one to vent to. So she’d ignored Fluff’s warnings and told Marinette everything.

And Adrien had died.

That timeline doesn’t exist anymore, but Alix still can’t unsee Ladybug’s grief-wracked face, torn apart, screaming at the sky for something, _anything_ , to bring her partner back. Alix had obliged.

“Of course you’re not late!” Alya says, sliding her backpack over to make room for Marinette. “Bustier isn’t even here yet.”

Alix holds her palms flat against the desk, pressing them down to keep them from shaking. It does nothing for her knees, but nobody can see those—nobody’s looking. It takes everything she has not to race up to Marinette, to embrace her, to say _I’m sorry, I know what you’re going through, I promise it will get better. **Everything** is going to get better._

Marinette glances back at her, and there’s something in her eyes—she knows Alix is Bunnyx, of course, she _gave_ her the watch. But she doesn’t know Alix knows about her. There’s nothing Alix can do.

Marinette turns back to Alya, Alya who is too loud, Alya who is too overwhelming, Alya who is _trying,_ trying to help her friend but doesn’t know how—she knows something’s wrong, she knows Marinette is hurting but she doesn’t, won’t, can’t know why. Only Marinette and Alix know, and Alix is making it worse. Because she has to. Because that’s the only way things can get better.

_“Why can’t they be together?” Alix says. “It’s—look, I don’t **get** love, okay, it’s not me, but **them**?” She presses hers palm against the white frame of the Burrow, staring into the window, watching Adrien and Marinette, Chat and Ladybug, dance together, laugh together, hold each other up, save each other. Watching them smile as they gaze into each other’s eyes with a clarity of purpose, of meaning. “They’re—if I’ve ever seen love, they’re it. They’re perfect for each other.”_

_“Yes,” Fluff says sadly behind her. “They are.” She floats over to Alix’s shoulder. “And as long as Hawkmoth will live, he used that against them. It is not—was not—will not be safe.”_

Alix sits in the back of the class as her teacher walks in the door, watching Adrien and Marinette—her friends, her _heroes_ —look past each other. Watches the weight of the world crush heavy on their shoulders, a weight they believe they can never share; a weight she carries now as well. The whole world is on her back—the whole of time. All of the secrets that she was never supposed to know.

 _One more year of misery_ , she tells herself. _One more year of slowly killing my friends to save them. One more year until they’re free._

She just hopes she can live with herself when the year is over.


End file.
